Jigsaw
by C3L35714
Summary: Shrugging, he sets down two plates catered by a restaurant that wasn't here a decade ago. The motion moves each pleat in his fitted suit. He's grown into his shoulders now. She straightens her own, smug and protective, as old faces give them double-takes: them, still two odd ducks sitting on the outside. Crystal, Silver, and their high school reunion. It's all coming together now.


**_thanks to RedAbsol for the ship suggestion!_**

**_modern au!_**

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**song inspiration: Thank You, by MKTO**

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In one corner of the sweaty gymnasium, Crys leans against a tall table with both elbows. She surveys the room with bored eyes. Unlike some of her other friends, she has not been secretly (or even not-so-secretly) been looking forward to her high school's ten-year renunion at all. It's not as though she's been dreading it since graduation, or anything — she made good friends and good memories in these halls. But the truth of the matter is that many of her friends were in different grades from her, and thus cannot, by any means, come to this year's celebrations. And it's not like she hasn't seen them since.

The night is halfway over already. (And Crys is more than half over this night.) She's made her rounds like a polite citizen. She's collected and extended business cards like it's a game. She's chatted with the few acquaintances who she hasn't seen in a while, the ones who have ditched Facebook but not yet gotten ahold of Twitter.

But everyone has started to settle now, settled in their seats like drink in stomach, and she watches a mass of teeming thirty-year-olds the same way she used to watch a mass of just-over thirteen-year-olds. It's all the same old, same old — the gossip is nearly thick enough to choke her. Nearly. But it's not sudden enough, not surprising enough, so instead of suffocating her, the miasma of throwback tunes and pointed fingers and raised eyebrows just…settles, heavy, on her shoulders.

There are tables everywhere and chairs and a bar that she's steering fairly clear of and a dance floor that she's steering very clear of. The view is good enough from her hiding place in the shadows, and she can track enough familiar faces that she feels very smart for staying so far away.

One of those familiar faces is Gold's, of course. Best friends in high school or not, most unlikely sweethearts of the year or not, she hasn't seen him in a little while. College and all associates broke up their summer fun, and then she sort of lost track of him. Except for the copious Instagram posts, of course.

Actually, she caught up with him around Fourth of July last year. Yes, that's right. Over brunch and a movie, they reminisced the whole time. Surface-level conversations, like a plastic duck floating around in a deep, deep murky-bottomed pond. And that's no one's fault, really — he tries but just doesn't understand her work, and there are only so many times airplane folks can say their pre-flight safety speech before everyone's eyes glaze over. He does it for her once, anyway, including the hand-motions and a very overdramatic inflating of the lifejacket, and they laugh about it over waffles.

And she hasn't really thought about him since.

Crys considers, not for the first time, wandering over to say hello. They had locked eyes earlier but he was immediately swept away by old soccer buddies, and that was that. But he fits in among the laughter and the glory as if he had never left. And that's just not her thing.

So she sits in the dark and watches.

"Just like the good old days," a low voice behind her says. Instinctively, she checks over her shoulder before deciding which smile to put on. To her relief, she gets to wear a genuine one.

"Welcome back," she greets him dryly, turning her body to face him. Off-handedly, she wonders now what he's referring to: the two of them? being off in a corner in the midst of a party? passively casting judgements at the world? She cannot be certain.

In his hands are two plates of food catered from a restaurant that didn't use to live here. Not when they were in school, anyway. He sets one down in front of her. In lieu of thanking him, she tips an arched eyebrow in his direction.

"You should've just fled when the lights came back on," she remarks.

He shrugs, drinking a small sip of water. The small gesture moves each pleat of his well-fitted suit. Although Silver has always seemed so much taller than he really was — which was a feat, since he was a slight kid, really, and short, back then — he's finally grown into those rock-steady shoulders of his now. She felt both smug and curiously protective walking in tonight as people did double-takes of interest. They've had a few uncomfortable encounters already where someone has come over, said hi to Crys, and then jumped ship. Whether they have no idea who he is or remember all too well, she is hardly surprised. Silver had probably attended something like eight out of forty of the basic school functions throughout their time here.

The looks have tapered, now. He's always had a way of blending into the background.

"Thanks," she finally says, her humor bleeding away into manners. His mouth quirks. But before he can respond — and this disappoints her; she was very interested in his reply — there is a gasp so loud that it sets her teeth on edge.

"Crystal!" the voice trills — trills! — and she turns around with her Big Grin attached firmly to her face.

Then the Big Grin drops and so does her jaw.

"Lyra Soul!" she exclaims.

The woman in question laughs with delight, grabbing for Crys's wrist. She is sparkling. Literally. Jewelry of all kinds hang off of her body, but even Crys and her untrained eye for fanciful things can tell that it's more tasteful than tacky. Just…a little much. A lot much, really.

"It's great to see you!" Crys manages around the other girl's very tall hair. Lyra is either doing exceedingly well for herself or going through a carefully-plotted scheme to appear that way.

"You too!" Lyra enthuses, patting her arm and pulling back. "How have you been?" Crys conveys to her a short speech that she's got memorized now — she's a scientist, she does fieldwork, she's writing a book — though Lyra, at least, seems somewhat invested. Like she'll remember tomorrow morning, or at least try. That's nice. That's refreshing.

(Behind Crystal, Silver's jaw clenches without his say-so. It's an effort to ease the breath in his lungs, to remember where and when and why he is here. It's been years — literally, a decade — since his ex has had any power over him and he likes to keep it that way.

And, really, honestly, it's not a big deal. It's not. If he's thinking clearly, he knows that there's no chance for this bejeweled girl to have any kind of control over him whatsoever. He doesn't care one whit about her now. It's just that. Well, Silver doesn't have many friends and he never really has. To see any one of them now is absolutely jarring. And that is what he's feeling now. He gets the same feeling from Gold, and from Wallace, and Steven and Drake and Glacia and Phoebe and Sidney, for no real reason other than that here is proof that once upon a time, he took the time to create…connections. With real human beings. Silver doesn't like his past very much.

So, the million-dollar question of the night:

What's he doing here now?)

"And who's this?" Lyra says expectantly, and Crys swallows back a cringe. But then Lyra stops, takes off her rhinestone glasses, and gets real close. "Is that Silver?" Her excitement doesn't lessen at the discovery. Also nice and refreshing. "You swore you'd never step foot in this place for the rest of your life! Wow, am I glad to see you!" She goes to hug him and Crys watches with painful amusement.

He doesn't return the effort, but he also doesn't flee.

Yet.

Crys can see the urge in his eyes, though, and she tries not to laugh out loud.

"Hello," he says finally. Stiffly.

"What a throwback, am I right?" Lyra says, undaunted by the decidedly not-very-warm welcome from her long-unrequited and then shortly-requited romantic interest. "The three of us…oof, those were the days."

"They were," Crys agrees more mildly. It's kind of true, that there were days of her and Silver and Lyra. But Lyra was busy in a different way than Crys was busy, and the social arrangements have fallen to the wayside. She separates the different years of high school by the important markers, like which science classes she took when and which were the standardized tests of the year.

Biology and Gold hitting her with a skateboard, that was freshman year. That was also the year of the ill-progressing science club and meeting Green.

Sophomore year was chemistry and robotics and Silver reluctantly relinquishing the last textbook to her after she almost started crying. That's when she started living in the library, she remembers, after getting her driver's license.

Junior year was physics and more biology and a strange little ferris wheel misadventure with Gold. And meeting Gold meant meeting Lyra.

Senior year was, to the best of her memory, more chemistry and some environmental science and getting nominated to homecoming court and computer science and a little bit more extracurricular biology and watching Lyra take home the crown.

It's harder than she thought it would be to feel comfortable around many of these people — some of them she once would have taken piggyback rides and car rides from without blinking.

"I forgot forks," Silver announces abruptly and makes himself scarce. On the other tables, big and round and populated by a dozen folks each, there are place settings beside each paper plate and glass combo. But these little tables are meant more for either socializing or purposefully avoiding just that.

As soon as he's gone, Lyra lowers her head and peers at Crys over the rim of her glasses.

"Are you two here…together?" she asks, eyes sparkling and tone speculative. "When I walked over, I didn't believe my eyes. Crystal, dating somebody? I didn't remember you changing your relationship status or anything at all. But then it was Silver, and I assumed y'all just found each other here, same as I found you. But then," she says, pausing for breath for the first time, "two plates! Two glasses! Two chairs! Two of you! Two!"

Crys coughs.

"It's very stuffy over there," she says truthfully. "I just wanted some air. And you know how Silver is."

"Mhm. Lunch in the library every day for a year," she reminiscences. Lyra nods for a moment before diving right back to the question that Crys doesn't know how to avoid without lying. "But are you here together?"

There are so many potential responses there. Even if no one else has mentioned that possibility — people are more likely to assume that two old weirdos from the past are still just two new weirdos in the now.

And, well.

Are they?

Silver and Crys had never really lost contact after high school the way so many naturally do. But even then, it was only sparse communications lobbed back and forth from afar. It's only been in the last year that the emails turned into texts into Skype into lunch into dinner into Since your car is still getting fixed up, I can give you a ride to the reunion tomorrow? into I'd like that. I mean, I'd appreciate it.

So Crys doesn't really have an answer.

"Not really," she tells Lyra, uncomfortable because Silver will be back any minute and for some reason she's not sure if her answer would be the same if he was or not.

Somehow, she manages to avoid the question du jour. Silver gets back eventually, brandishing two forks in a particularly aggressive handhold. And, a little bit later, she gives them both hugs, takes Crys's business card, and swans off, leaving the two of them again in their bubble, undisturbed among the crowds.

Their hands bump when reaching for glasses of water but it's not anything cute because one of the glasses spills over the edge and she stands up fast, patting pff her trousers with a sigh because the damage is done but not irreversible and her feet are cold and wet.

She gives Silver a look of exasperation, and, to her surprise, he levels her with a particularly focused expression. Sure, he's intense and she knows that, but there's something else mixed in there. Something lighter.

"What?" Crys asks, raising her eyebrows even as she reaches for a napkin to blot with.

"Let's go," he says, in that strangely light manner, and she doesn't need to run her eyes over the rest of the room — at all these little bits of her past — before coming to a conclusion.

In all of her ever-increasing talks with Silver over the last few months, talk about their old high school days are only sprinkled in every once in a while. Not even every conversation. And Crys has always been more future-oriented, down to highlighting her planners with so many colors that each page could have decorated an Easter egg.

"Sure," Crys says, clicking her heels together just once — definitively. "I think we've been back here long enough."

"Agreed."

They walk away from it all with their hands close together.


End file.
